Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
August 20, 2024 2:28 AM - Subscribe

When Cyrus Kriticos, a very rich collector of unique things, dies, he leaves his house, fortune, and his prized collection of ghosts. This remake of the 1960 13 Ghosts was one of a run of classic horror remakes from the very late '90s, early 2000s, including remakes of The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill.

We caught OG House on Haunted Hill a few weeks ago, which kicked off a house mini-marathon of watching films of that era, followed by their universally pretty terrible, very '90s, remakes.

Thir13en Ghosts (pronounced, at least by us, as "Thirthirteenen Ghosts") is arguably the most fun of the three, scratching a kind of Pokémon itch as Tony Shalhoub, his charming daughter, inexplicable nanny, and annoying as hell son inherit a house created by ghost hunter and occultist F. Murray Abraham (pronounced "Furry Abraham"), get involved with sinister lawyer JR Bourne and an incredibly twitchy, eyebrow-free, Matthew Lillard.

Once trapped in the house with the homicidal ghosts getting released by a demonically inspired Rube Goldberg machine, it's a lot of running up and down stairs, bumping into indestructible glass etched with Latin, weird decision-making and a complete lack of math, despite the movie's gentle insistence that we know at every turn that Shalhoub is a math professor. If your itch gets scratched by lore, it's deeply satisfying that the movie counts off the ghosts more than once, with a handy and lavishly illustrated guide to them all including fun names.

The only major film appearance of rapper Rah Digga, who does an admirable job with a very poorly conceived role (why does a semi-employed, broke, math professor living with his teen daughter and son in a tiny apartment need a nanny?).

Everyone seems to be having a really good time, scenery gets chewed, some of the ghost designs are fun, and there's a lot of '90s-trope horror twitch-movement editing, the absolutely worst fake breasts ever committed to camera, and IMO stellar set design with the house itself. It's pretty easy to tell who the thirthirteenenth ghost is going to be after the third-act surprise reveal, but it's a fun ride.
posted by Shepherd (10 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I remember very little about it other than shots of gears turning and (glass?) walls moving, but I also remember enjoying it in a mindless, memory-free sort of way.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:02 AM on August 20 [2 favorites]


It's quite fun! I mean, it begs so many logical questions, but nonetheless!

You have OSCAR WINNER F. Murray Abraham cashing a cheque for this role! (In the grand tradition of so many who came before him and came after.)

As Shepherd mentioned above, Rah Digga does the best she can with a role that I could only describe as "sassy Black nanny." Like, she is the Quip Machine for the movie and it feels thankless. But I hope she got a good payday out of it, at least.

Honestly Matthew Lillard is a fun actor to watch. I am not a fan of prequel-ly stuff but I would kinda like to know Dennis' backstory as it's clear his life as a reluctant psychic has been hell.

You know what? Sign me up for exploring the weird world Cyrus, Dennis, and an also slumming Embeth Davidtz swim in. Ghosts, the trapping of ghosts, the barrier and containment spells, the satanic semi-explanation of the MacGuffin machine...
posted by Kitteh at 6:24 AM on August 20 [3 favorites]


I remember little about the movie itself, but the web site for it had a ton of stuff about the ghosts. Backstories, pictures, you name it. Someone really had fun creating the world of the movie.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:48 AM on August 20 [2 favorites]


I saw it shortly after it came out on video and rather liked it.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:20 AM on August 20


I saw it in the theater, and enjoyed it! It's not good, but it is really fun.
posted by maryellenreads at 10:55 AM on August 20 [1 favorite]


I saw this in the theatre and I was not a fan then. While I did have a fondness for the hokey original, which is also not very good, I don't think that coloured my opinion much. My main memory of it is an uneven script (there's like 4 writers on this thing which is never a good sign though allegedly one of them was James Gunn) and I thought the visual effects were poor overall. Maybe my opinion would be softened now that I am in deep middle age? I'm not sure if I am willing to find out. I do have a soft spot for the director's follow-up film Ghost Ship (a remake of the Jack Hill scripted Alvin Rakoff directed tax shelter film Death Ship).
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:41 AM on August 20 [2 favorites]


Yeah this is better than it has any right to be. I have an especial soft spot for movies with demonic clockwork devices and engines, and this one hits it hard. (It's a short list; this movie, Event Horizon, Cronos, the Hellraiser movies to some extent, probably a few others I'm not thinking of, but if anyone has suggestions along these lines I'm all ears.)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 2:30 AM on August 22 [2 favorites]


A pretty solid entry in the "demonic clockwork spaces" genre is 1997's Cube (Wikipedia link contains spoilers, of course). There's some math in that one, too.
posted by merriment at 4:39 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]


Oh right, forgot about Cube, good catch. Not sure the eponymous cube is demonic exactly, I think it's pretty well established as a fantastical but ultimately mundane mechanical construct, right? Demonic in effect though, certainly, and probably in original intent, if not in operation.

I was reminded of Cube near the end of Cabin in the Woods actually, which (spoiler) has its own fantastical mechanical system of moving cubes. I think there's a better argument for that construct being partially demonic or at least supernatural in nature, but given the context I guess it's just as likely as Cube to be the entirely mundane product of a shitload of secret government funding and advanced research. (I'd love to see some kind of CitW prequel story, in the vein of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, that explores exactly how this secret multinational organization came to exist and to build the facilities they needed.)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 4:35 PM on August 28


Heh, my bad. I was definitely reading "demonic" in its metaphorical sense (like Blake's dark Satanic Mills), but of course, in horror, demons can be entirely literal.

It's been so long since I saw it that I don't quite remember how or why the Cube was doing what it was doing, but I'm sure you're right that its origin wasn't supernatural.
posted by merriment at 4:27 AM on August 29


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